Washington: The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United States Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) with a view to strengthening consultation, information sharing and establishing a framework for technical assistance between the two organisations.

The CFTC is the US Federal Regulator with the mandate to regulate commodity futures and option markets in the United States.

The MoU was signed on Wednesday (Apr 28, 2004) by SEBI chairman G N Bajpai and CFTC chairman James Newsome.

The MOU marks the beginning of greater collaboration between India and the United States to effectively regulate and develop the futures markets, in view of greater cross-border trade and cross-market linkages brought about by the globalisation of financial markets, the Indian Embassy said in a press release.

This Memorandum of Understanding is a significant step in furthering Indo-US understanding and co-operation, it said.

As an active member of IOSCO, SEBI is committed to ensure fair and orderly development of the securities markets and co-operation with other global regulators, it said.

This is the sixth MoU that SEBI had signed with its counterparts. It had earlier signed such agreements with Securities and Exchange Commission, USA; Securities Commission, Malaysia; Financial Services Commission, Mauritius; Securities and Exchange, Sri Lanka and Monetary Authority of Singapore.